Free Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy by Robert Silverberg Page A

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    Sister Michela came with his evening soup just as Roland was getting past the shivery muscles and galloping heartbeat that resulted from his second nibble of brown reed. Michela looked at his flushed face with some concern, but had to accept his assurances that he did not feel feverish; she couldn’t bring herself to touch him and judge the heat of his skin for herself—the medallion held her away.
    With the soup was a popkin. The bread was leathery and the meat inside it tough, but Roland demolished it greedily, just the same. Michela watched with a complacent smile, hands folded in front of her, nodding from time to time. When he had finished the soup, she took the bowl back from him carefully, making sure their fingers did not touch.
    “Ye’re healing,” she said. “Soon you’ll be on yer way, and we’ll have just yer memory to keep, Jim.”
    “Is that true?” he asked quietly.
    She only looked at him, touched her tongue against her upper lip, giggled, and departed. Roland closed his eyes and lay back against his pillow, feeling lethargy steal over him again. Her speculative eyes … her peeping tongue. He had seen women look at roast chickens and joints of mutton that same way, calculating when they might be done.
    His body badly wanted to sleep, but Roland held on to wakefulness for what he judged was an hour, then worked one of the reeds out from under the pillow. With a fresh infusion of their “can’t-move medicine” in his system, this took an enormous effort, and he wasn’t sure he could have done it at all, had he not separated this one reed from the ribbon holding the others. Tomorrow night, Jenna’s note had said. If that meant escape, the idea seemed preposterous. The way he felt now, he might be lying in this bed until the end of the age.
    He nibbled. Energy washed into his system, clenching his muscles and racing his heart, but the burst of vitality was gone almost as soon as it came, buried beneath the Sisters’ stronger drug. He could only hope … and sleep.
    When he woke it was full dark, and he found he could move his arms and legs in their network of slings almost naturally. He slipped one of the reeds out from beneath his pillow and nibbled cautiously. She had left half a dozen, and the first two were now almost entirely consumed.
    The gunslinger put the stem back under the pillow, then began to shiver like a wet dog in a downpour. I took too much, he thought. I’ll be lucky not to convulse—
    His heart, racing like a runaway engine. And then, to make matters worse, he saw candlelight at the far end of the aisle. A moment later he heard the rustle of their gowns and the whisk of their slippers.
    Gods, why now? They’ll see me shaking, they’ll know—
    Calling on every bit of his willpower and control, Roland closed his eyes and concentrated on stilling his jerking limbs. If only he had been in bed instead of in these cursed slings, which seemed to tremble as if with their own ague at every movement!
    The Little Sisters drew closer. The light of their candles bloomed red within his closed eyelids. Tonight they were not giggling, nor whispering among themselves. It was not until they were almost on top of him that Roland became aware of the stranger in their midst—a creature that breathed through its nose in great, slobbery gasps of mixed air and snot.
    The gunslinger lay with his eyes closed, the gross twitches and jumps of his arms and legs under control, but with his muscles still knotted and crampy, thrumming beneath the skin. Anyone who looked at him closely would see at once that something was wrong with him. His heart was larruping away like a horse under the whip, surely they must see—
    But it wasn’t him they were looking at—not yet, at least.
    “Have it off him,” Mary said. She spoke in a bastardized version of the low speech Roland could barely understand. “Then t’other ’un. Go on, Ralph.”
    “U’se has whik-sky?” the slobberer asked, his dialect